(First Edition, Signed Bookplate) In this sweeping narrative, the author of A Beautiful Mind takes us on a journey through the past two centuries with men and women whose work has affected the lives of virtually everyone on the planet. Telling the story of the making of modern economics, Sylvia Nasar begins with Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew describing the condition of the poor majority in mid-19th-century London, and the heroic efforts of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and others to put those insights into action. From John Maynard Keynes to American economists Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman, and India's Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, Nasar shows how the insights of these activist thinkers transformed economies everywhere. This first edition includes a bookplate signed by Nasar.

"Grand Pursuit is a worthy successor to Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers.... Nasar's aim is to put the reader into the lives of the characters of a sweeping historical drama.... That she largely succeeds reflects the depth and breadth of her research but also the elegance of her prose."—Washington Post